The present invention relates to an electric connector with contact elements of shape-memory material.
In present electric or electronic connectors, the density of connection is a parameter of major significance because of the number, always growing, of electric circuits present in modern electronic or electro-mechanical assemblies. In consequence it appears that the operational electric connectors have necessarily a significant number of male-female connectible contact elements engaged by friction. The connection-disconnection of this type of connector therefore necessitates the application of significant forces on account of the number of contact elements. The repetition of connection-disconnection operations has the effect of causing a phenomenon of wear on the contact elements and in time the deterioration of the corresponding connectors.
Shape-memory materials have up until now been the object of a few applications in the field of electronics or of the electronic industry for ensuring, particularly, electric connection or disconnection functions.
One can cite on this subject U.S. Pat. No. 4,205,293 in which a thermoelectric commutator is provided by means of a shape-memory material. However, in the device described in this document, as well as in all devices actually known, the connection-disconnection function is ensured by means of conventional contact elements which are brought into action by the intermediary of an actuator element itself only constituted in a shape-memory material and able to participate, only from the mechanical point of view, to the desired connection-disconnection function.
This type of device although able to give satisfaction for devices in which the connection or the disconnection operates on a single or a small number of circuits, can in no case be able to be used in electronic connectors on account of the complexity of their arrangement and/or the often prohibitive congestion of these devices, which cannot permit envisaging of similar densities of connection to the densities of connection currently achieved in the field of electronic connection.